Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals

By E. Norman Gardiner

"Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals" by E. Norman Gardiner. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Nov 22, 2019
• ISBN: 4057664632647

Book preview

E. Norman Gardiner

Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4057664632647

Table of Contents

PREFACE

PART I A HISTORY OF GREEK ATHLETICS AND ATHLETIC FESTIVALS FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 393 A.D.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER II ATHLETICS IN HOMER

CHAPTER III THE RISE OF THE ATHLETIC FESTIVAL

CHAPTER IV THE AGE OF ATHLETIC FESTIVALS, SIXTH CENTURY B.C.

CHAPTER V THE AGE OF THE ATHLETIC IDEAL, 500-440 B.C.

CHAPTER VI PROFESSIONALISM AND SPECIALIZATION, 440-338 B.C.

CHAPTER VII THE DECLINE OF ATHLETICS, 338-146 B.C.

CHAPTER VIII ATHLETICS UNDER THE ROMANS

CHAPTER IX THE OLYMPIC FESTIVAL

CHAPTER X THE PYTHIAN, ISTHMIAN, AND NEMEAN FESTIVALS

(1) The Pythia

(2) The Isthmia

(3) The Nemea

CHAPTER XI THE ATHLETIC FESTIVALS OF ATHENS

PART II THE ATHLETIC EXERCISES OF THE GREEKS WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR STADIA AND GYMNASIA

CHAPTER XII THE STADIUM

CHAPTER XIII THE FOOT-RACE

CHAPTER XIV THE JUMP AND HALTERES

CHAPTER XV THROWING THE DISKOS

CHAPTER XVI THROWING THE JAVELIN

CHAPTER XVII THE PENTATHLON

CHAPTER XVIII WRESTLING

CHAPTER XIX BOXING

CHAPTER XX THE PANKRATION

CHAPTER XXI THE HIPPODROME

CHAPTER XXII THE GYMNASIUM AND THE PALAESTRA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

INDEX OF GREEK WORDS

PREFACE

Table of Contents

It is my hope that the present volume may prove of interest to the general reader as well as to the student of the past. For though its subject may seem at first sight purely archaeological, many of the problems with which it deals are as real to us to-day as they were to the Greeks. The place of physical training and of games in education, the place of athletics in our daily life and in our national life, are questions of present importance to us all, and in considering these questions we cannot fail to learn something from the athletic history of a nation which for a time at least succeeded in reconciling the rival claims of body and of mind, and immortalized this result in its art.

This is my first and perhaps my chief justification for the length of this volume. My second is that there is no existing work in English on the subject, nor even in the extensive literature which Germany has produced is there any work of quite the same scope. The Gymnastik u. Agonistik of J. H. Krause is a masterpiece of erudition, accuracy and judgment. But this work was published in 1841, and since that date excavation and the progress of archaeology have brought to light such a mass of new material as to change entirely our outlook on the past. The excavations at Olympia have for the first time enabled us to trace the whole history of the festival and to treat Greek athletics historically.

In the first part of this work I have endeavoured to write a continuous history of Greek athletics. The attempt is an ambitious one, perhaps too ambitious for one whose occupation has left him little time for continuous study. The long period covered involves a multitude of difficult and disputed problems, which it is impossible within the limits of this work to discuss fully. In all these cases I have endeavoured to sift the evidence for myself, and to form an independent judgment. Many of the details may be obscure, and many of my conclusions are doubtless open to criticism. Yet the general outline of the story is clear, and I venture to think that it has a more than passing interest and importance.

The second part is more technical, though it may perhaps appeal to those who are actively interested in athletics. It consists of a number of chapters, each complete in itself, dealing with the details of Greek athletics. Many of the chapters are taken from articles published by me in the Journal of Hellenic Studies. The chapters on the Stadium, the Gymnasium, the Hippodrome and Boxing are entirely new. In the first two of these chapters will be found the latest results of excavations at Delphi, Epidaurus, Priene and Pergamum, results which are not readily accessible to the English reader.

The arrangement of the work has involved a certain amount of repetition, and the introduction separately and in their historical order of certain details which it would be clearer perhaps, and certainly more picturesque, to group together. But it seemed to me worth while to sacrifice something of clearness and effect in order to bring out the historical aspect of the subject, an aspect which is completely obscured in most of our text-books. Further, I have endeavoured clearly to distinguish between what is certain and what is conjectural. The words perhaps and possibly recur, I am only too conscious, with monotonous persistence. But where the evidence is too inadequate or too contradictory to admit of certainty, the only safe and honest course is to confess ignorance and to hope that the discovery of some new manuscript may dispel our doubts. The neglect of this distinction between the conjectural and the certain has been a fertile source of error.

Great importance has been attached to the evidence of contemporary monuments, and illustrations have been given of the principal monuments described. In their selection preference has been given ceteris paribus to objects in the British Museum, because these are likely to be most accessible to the majority of readers. In the case of vases the interpretation often depends on the composition, and whole scenes have as far as possible been reproduced rather than single figures. Museum references are appended to the illustrations wherever available, and also some indication of the date of the objects illustrated. Literary references will be found in the list of illustrations.

Many of the illustrations have been prepared expressly for this book, and for these I am indebted to the careful and excellent work of Mr. Emery Walker. A large number are reproduced from articles by myself and others which have appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, and in expressing my thanks to the Council of the Hellenic Society for permission to reproduce them I should like to render testimony to the value of the Library of that Society to any one who, like myself, does not live in the vicinity of any great Library. But for the generous facilities which this Society affords for borrowing books, any work which I have been able to do would have been almost impossible.

In spelling, consistency appears to be unattainable, and I have in the main adopted the compromise recommended in the Journal of Hellenic Studies. In the case of proper nouns, names of places, people, buildings, festivals, the Latin spelling has been adopted, in the case of other Greek words the Greek spelling, except where the Latin form is so familiar that any other form would be pedantic. Names of months are treated as purely Greek words. With regard to ει, ei has been kept where it occurs in the stem of a word, e is employed usually in terminations.

It is impossible to mention here the many authors whose works I have laid under contribution. Many of my debts are acknowledged in the notes. But I cannot omit to mention three—Dr. J. H. Krause, of whose work I have already spoken; Dr. Ernst Curtius, the writer of the chapter on the history of Olympia in the great work which he edited with Dr. Adler; and Dr. Julius Jüthner, whose Antike Turngeräthe and edition of Philostratus’ Gymnastike published only last year are indispensable to any student of the subject. To Dr. Jüthner I must also express my thanks for his generous permission to make use of the illustrations in his work.

Among the many friends who have helped me I should like especially to thank Professor E. A. Gardner, Mr. G. F. Hill, and Mr. H. B. Walters for their constant readiness to advise me and to give me the benefit of their special knowledge of Greek sculpture, coins and vases. Many of the illustrations of sculpture are taken from Professor E. A. Gardner’s Handbook of Greek Sculpture, and the coins have been especially selected for me by Mr. G. F. Hill. Nor must I omit to mention Louis Dyer, whose death occurred while I was working on the early history of Olympia. He had himself projected a work on Olympia, to which I hoped to refer in confirmation of my views. His minute and accurate knowledge, his readiness to impart his knowledge, his enthusiastic and unselfish sympathy made his death an irreparable loss to me. Many corrections are due to the conscientious care of another of my friends, Herbert Awdry, who was engaged in reading my proofs almost up to the day of his death.

It is a fitting circumstance that this book should have been produced under the auspices of Professor Percy Gardner, seeing that he was unconsciously the originator of it. My interest in the subject was first aroused by the chapter on Olympia in his New Chapters from Greek History, which I read on my return from a cruise in the Argonaut, in the course of which I had visited Olympia. Professor Percy Gardner has read the book both in manuscript and in proof, and many improvements are due to his suggestions. He is, however, in no wise responsible for the views expressed, much less for any errors which I may have committed.

E. NORMAN GARDINER.

Epsom College,

Surrey.

LIST OF THE COMMONEST ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES

Table of Contents

PART I

A HISTORY OF GREEK ATHLETICS AND ATHLETIC FESTIVALS FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 393 A.D.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Table of Contents

The recent revival of the Olympic games is a striking testimony to the influence which ancient Greece still exercises over the modern world, and to the important place which athletics occupied in the life of the Greeks. Other nations may have given equal attention to the physical education of the young; other nations may have been equally fond of sport; other nations may have produced individual athletes, individual performances equal or superior to those of the Greeks, but nowhere can we find any parallel to the athletic ideal expressed in the art and literature of Greece, or to the extraordinary vitality of her athletic festivals. The growth of this ideal, and the history of the athletic festivals, are the subject of the following chapters.

The athletic ideal of Greece is largely due to the practical character of Greek athletics. Every Greek had to be ready to take the field at a moment’s notice in defence of hearth and home, and under the conditions of ancient warfare his life and liberty depended on his physical fitness. This is especially true of the earlier portion of Greek history, but is more or less true of the whole period with which we are concerned. Greece was never free from war—wars of faction, wars of state against state, wars against foreign invaders—and ancient warfare made no distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Every citizen was a soldier, physical fitness was a necessity to him, and his athletic exercises were admirably calculated to produce this fitness. Running and jumping made him active and sound of wind; throwing the diskos and the spear trained hand and eye for the use of weapons; wrestling and boxing taught him to defend himself in hand-to-hand warfare.

The practical value of these exercises explains their importance in Greek education. They constituted what the Greeks described as gymnastic, the term athletics being properly confined to competitions. Gymnastic trained the body as music trained the mind. There was no artificial separation, no antagonism between the two such as has disfigured much of our modern education. The one was the complement of the other: together they comprised the whole of Greek education. An ill-trained body was as much a sign of an ill-educated man as ignorance of letters, and the training of the body by athletic exercises distinguished the Greek from the barbarian. The training began often as early as seven, but it did not end at the age when boys leave school. The Greek did not consider his education finished at the age of sixteen or seventeen, and he continued the training of body and mind till middle age or later, daily resorting to the gymnasium for exercise and recreation.

Music and gymnastic reacted on one another. The tone and manly vigour which athletic exercises gave saved the Greek from the effeminacy and sensuality to which the artistic temperament is prone. At the same time the refining influence of music saved him from the opposite faults of brutality and Philistinism. The Greek carried the artist’s love of beauty into his sports. Mere strength and bulk appealed to him no more in the human body than they did in art. Many of his exercises were performed to music, and he paid as much attention to the style in which he performed as to the result of his performance. This love of form refined even his competitions. Hence, in spite of his love of competition, the Greek was no record-breaker. In this we have one of the principal differences which distinguished Greek from modern athletics, in which the passion for records is becoming more and more prevalent.

The Greek did not care for records, and he kept no records. It is futile, therefore, to try to compare the performances of Greek athletes and of modern. But of the effect which athletic training produced on the national physique in the fifth century, we can judge from the art which it inspired. The sculptors of this period portrayed the most perfect types of physical development, of strength combined with grace, that the world has ever seen. The athletic art of Greece is the noblest tribute to the results of Greek education at its best.

A further difference between modern and Greek athletics results from the practical character of the latter. The Greek regarded athletics as an essential part of his education and life; we usually regard them as recreation or play, and it is only of late years that their educational value has been realized. Consequently in England athletic games have to a large extent superseded athletics proper. In some respect games have a decided advantage; their interest is more varied, there is more scope for combination, and they are undoubtedly superior as a training of character. On the other hand, they do not produce the same all-round development as an athletic system like that of the Greeks produced. In many cases the benefit derived from them is confined to the skilled players. They tend to become too scientific, and when this is the case require an expenditure of time and an amount of organization which put them beyond the reach of most men when they have left school.

The interest which is somewhat wanting in pure athletics was provided in Greece by innumerable competitions. The love of competition was characteristic of the Greek. In whatever he did, he sought to excel his fellows, and the rivalry between cities was as keen as that between individuals. On the table on which the prizes were placed at Olympia, the figure of Agon or Competition was represented side by side with that of Ares. There were competitions in music, poetry, drama, recitation. At some places there were beauty competitions for men, or boys, or women. We hear of competitions in drinking and in keeping awake. Strangest of all was a competition in kissing, which took place at the Dioclea at Megara. But no competitions were so numerous or so popular as athletic and equestrian competitions. The Greek was always competing or watching competitions; yet, strange to say, among all the evils produced by over-competition, betting was not found.

Competitions were from an early time associated with religious Festivals. And it is to this association with religion that Greek athletics owed their wonderful vitality. The connexion between sport and religion dates from the early custom of celebrating a chieftain’s funeral with a feast and games. Sometimes the chieftain’s tomb became a religious and political centre for the neighbouring tribes, where a festival was held in his honour at stated periods. Some of these festivals retained their local character, others gradually extended their influence till they became national meeting-places for the whole Greek race.

These Panhellenic festivals played an important part in the politics of Greece. They appealed to those two opposite principles which determine the whole history of Greece, the love of autonomy and the pride of Hellenism. The independent city states felt that they were competing in the persons of their citizens, whose fortunes they identified with their own. At the same time, the gathering of citizens from every part of the Greek world quickened the consciousness of common brotherhood, and kept them true to those traditions of religion and education which distinguished Greek from barbarian.

Enough has been said to show the importance of athletics in the whole life of the Greeks, and their intimate connexion with their education, their art, their religion, and their politics. It is by virtue of this many-sided interest that the subject deserves the attention of all who are interested in the life and thought of Greece.

At the same time, it must be borne in mind that the athletic ideal which we have described was only realized during a short period of the fifth century, under the purifying influence of the enthusiasm evoked by the war with Persia. Even then, perhaps, it was only partially realized. We must not close our eyes to the element of exaggeration inherent in all such ideals. Before the close of the fifth century the excessive prominence given to bodily excellence and athletic success had produced specialization and professionalism. From this time sport, over-developed and over-specialized, became more and more the monopoly of a class, and consequently ceased to invigorate the national life. The old games, in which all competed in friendly and honourable rivalry, gave place to professional displays, in which victory was too often bought and sold, where an unathletic crowd could enjoy the excitement of sport by proxy. Yet in spite of specialization, professionalism, corruption, in spite of all the vicissitudes through which Greece passed, the athletic festivals survived. The athletic ideal, often and long obscured, but never wholly lost, reappeared from time to time in different parts of the Greek world, till, under the patronage of the Antonines, the Panhellenic festivals recovered some semblance at least of their olden glory.

The extraordinary vitality of those festivals gives interest to the attempt to trace their history. This history extends over some 1200 years. We are apt to limit our conceptions of Greek history to the few centuries comprised in the curricula of our universities and schools, and to forget that Greek history does not end with the death of Alexander, or even with the loss of Greek independence, but that, under the rule of Rome, the life of Greece, its institutions and festivals, went on, to a great extent, unchanged, acquiring more and more hold over her conquerors, till the whole Roman world was Hellenized, and with the founding of Constantinople the centre of the empire itself was transferred to Greek soil. To such a narrow conception of history it is a wholesome corrective to trace the story of one branch of Greek activity from beginning to end. And nowhere can the continuity of Greek life be traced more clearly than in the history of her athletic festivals. That we are able to do so is chiefly due to the excavations conducted at Olympia under the auspices of the German government, which are still being continued by Dr. Dörpfeld. It is for this reason that in the following chapters the history of Olympia forms the basis of the history of Greek athletics.

The story of Greek athletics has a peculiarly practical interest in the present day in view of the development of athletics which has taken place in the last fifty years, and of the revival of the Olympic games. There are striking resemblances between the history of modern athletics and of Greek. The movement began in the sports of our public schools and universities, spread rapidly through all English-speaking lands, and is now extending to the Continent. Athletics are as popular among us as they were in Greece, and for us, as for the Greeks, they have been a great instrument of good. Unfortunately the signs of excess are no less manifest to-day than they were in the times of Xenophanes and Euripides. History repeats itself strangely. We have seen the same growth of competition, the same hero-worship of the athlete, the same publicity and prominence given to sport out of all proportion to its deserts, the same tendency to specialization and professionalism. Sport has too often become an end in itself. The hero-worship of the athlete tempts men to devote to selfish amusement the best years of their lives, and to neglect the true interests of themselves and of their country. The evil is worse with us, because our games have not the practical value as a military training which Greek sports had. Still more grievous than this waste of time and energy is the absorbing interest taken by the general public in the athletic performances of others. The crowds which watch a professional football match, the still larger crowds of those who think and read of little else, the columns of the daily press devoted to accounts of such matches, are no proof of an athletic nation, but rather of the reverse. They are merely a sign of an unhealthy love of excitement and amusement, and of the absence of all other interests. Of the evils of professionalism this is no place to speak. They are well known to any one who has followed the history of boxing, wrestling, or football. The history of football during the last two years is ominous. On the one hand we see the leading amateur clubs revolting from the tyranny of a Football Association conducted in the interests of various joint-stock companies masquerading as Football Clubs; on the other hand we see the professional players forming a trades-union to protect themselves against the tyranny of this same commercialism. The Rugby Union has struggled manfully to uphold the purity of the game, and has often received but scanty encouragement for its efforts. Fortunately there are signs that public opinion is changing, and is beginning to appreciate the efforts of the amateur bodies controlling various sports. The very existence of these bodies proves how real the danger is. Under these circumstances the history of the decline of Greek athletics is an object-lesson full of instruction.

What has been said above explains perhaps why the revival of the Olympic games has not been received in England with any great amount of enthusiasm. The promoters of these games were inspired by the ideal of ancient Greece, and wished to establish a great international athletic meeting which would be for the nations of the world what Olympia was for Greece. We must all sympathize with their aspirations. Unfortunately they do not seem to have realized the full lesson of Greek athletics, nor did they realize the dangers of competition on so vast a scale under the more complicated conditions of modern life. In England, where athletics have already developed to an extent unknown on the Continent, we have begun to realize the dangers of over-competition. The experience of recent years has taught us that international competitions do not always make for amity, and do not always promote amateur sport. The events of the last Olympic games, and the subsequent performances of some of the victors of these games, particularly of the fêted heroes of the so-called Marathon race, have gone far to justify the forebodings of those who feared that one of the chief results of such a competition would be an increase in professionalism.

CHAPTER II

ATHLETICS IN HOMER

Table of Contents

Greek civilization is regarded by modern authorities as the result of a fusion between two races—a short, dark, highly artistic race belonging to that Eurafrican stock which seems at one time to have peopled not only the Aegean, but all the coasts of the Mediterranean, and a tall, fair-haired, athletic race the branches of which penetrated by successive invasions into the southern extremities of Europe, while their main body spread over central Europe westwards as far as our own islands. It was to the physical vigour and restless energy of the latter race that the Greeks owed their colonial activity and their love of sport. And it is perhaps no mere accident that these same characteristics have been so marked in our own history. But if the Greeks owed to the fair-haired invaders from the North the athletic impulse, the development and persistence of Greek athletics is largely due to the artistic temperament of the original inhabitants.

The practical character of Greek sports indicates a nation of warriors. The chariot-race and foot-race, boxing, wrestling, throwing the stone and the spear, were as naturally the outcome of the Homeric civilization as the tournament and the archery meeting were of the conditions of fighting in the middle ages, or the rifle meeting of those of our own day. Moreover, the myths with which Greek fancy invested the origin of their sports point to an age of fighting and conquest. Olympia, as we shall see, stood on the highway of the northern invaders, and at Olympia the institution of the games is connected with such tales as the conquest of Cronus by Zeus, of Oenomaus by Pelops, of Augeas by Heracles, and the return of the Heracleidae, tales which clearly had their rise in the struggles of rival races and religions. Again, Greek athletics were chiefly, though not entirely, the product of the Peloponnese. Three of the four great festivals were in the Peloponnese, including the Olympic festival, the prototype of all the rest; the athletic school of sculpture originated in the Peloponnese, and physical training was carried to its highest point in Sparta. Now it was in the Peloponnese that the invading races established themselves most strongly; the fair-haired Achaeans made themselves masters of the Mycenaean world, and their Dorian successors preserved their own characteristics in their greatest purity at Sparta. These considerations justify us in ascribing the athletic impulse to the northern invaders.

Fragment of Steatite Pyxis. Cnossus.

Fig. 1. Fragment of Steatite Pyxis. Cnossus.

Excavations on Mycenaean and pre-Mycenaean sites furnish some testimony, chiefly negative, in favour of this view. The civilization disclosed by the excavations at Cnossus and other Cretan sites is an Aegean product influenced possibly by Egypt and the East, but certainly not by the mainland of Greece, though its own influence was probably extensive. Cretan civilization, like Egyptian, seems so much a thing apart that it hardly comes into our subject. In Egypt, indeed, we find depicted in the tombs of Beni-Hassan a varied array of athletic sports and games, including a most wonderful series of over 300 wrestling groups, but even Herodotus does not venture to ascribe Greek athletics to the Egyptians. At Cnossus the favourite sport seems to have been a sort of bull-baiting.[1] A fresco discovered by Dr. Evans represents a girl toreador in a sort of cowboy costume in the act of being tossed by a bull, while a youth appears to be turning a somersault over the animal’s back into the arms of a girl who stands behind the bull. Sometimes on gems a youth is depicted springing from above, and seizing the bull’s horns in cowboy fashion. The latter scene has also been found in a fresco at Tiryns, and a similar sport known as ταυροκαθαψία survived in historical times in Thessaly.[2] These purely acrobatic feats have nothing distinctively athletic about them, any more than dancing, another favourite Minoan spectacle, for which possibly was intended a square theatre surrounded by rows of seats at the north-west of the palace. Indeed, such scenes are the very reverse of athletic; for history has shown that the peoples who find pleasure in such performances have ceased to be, even if they ever have been, themselves athletic. The only form of true athletics represented is boxing, which occurs on some clay sealings, on a steatite relief (Fig. 1), and in conjunction with a bull-hunting scene on a steatite rhyton found at Hagia Triada.[3] The boxers are muscular and athletic-looking, their attitude is decidedly vigorous. They wear, according to Dr. Evans, a kind of glove or caestus, but the illustrations do not enable us to determine its character, and I do not feel sure that any such covering is intended. Anyhow, the Minoan boxer has a distinctly gladiatorial look, which is quite in harmony with the bull-baiting scenes. We shall probably not be far wrong in assuming that Minos, like oriental despots, kept his own prize-ring, and that his courtiers preferred to be spectators of the deeds of others rather than to take any active part in sports themselves. Sports and games, of course, existed in Crete as in all countries, but there is no evidence in Crete of anything from which Greek athletics could have developed. The unathletic character of the Aegean people is confirmed by the absolute absence of anything athletic at Mycenae and Tiryns, if we except the bull scenes, a fact which certainly supports the modern view that the Mycenaean civilization was due chiefly to the conquered inhabitants, and not to the Achaean conquerors, whom we know from Homer to have been skilled in all games.

In Homer we find ourselves at once in an atmosphere of true sport, of sport for the simple love of the physical effort and the struggle. The wrestling and boxing may be distressful, but just as every sportsman finds a hard game the most enjoyable, so the struggle in Homer is a joy to the young man who makes trial of his strength, a joy to the veteran who, as he watches, revives in memory the triumphs of his youth, and a joy too to the poet.[4] It is this feeling that makes the description of the games of Patroclus a perpetual delight to any one who has ever felt himself the joy of sport, and that almost justifies the words of Schiller, that he who has lived to read the 23rd Iliad has not lived in vain. The joy is never quite the same afterwards. Even in Pindar it is no longer unalloyed. With the stress of competition other feelings and motives have entered in, and something of the heroic courtesy is lost: side by side with the joy of victory we are conscious of the bitterness of defeat. In Homer we feel only the joy, the joy of youth.

The description of the games in the Iliad could only have been written by a poet living among an athletic people with a long tradition of athletics, and such are the Achaeans. Sports are part of the education of every Achaean warrior, and distinguish him from the merchant. No, truly, stranger, says Euryalus to Odysseus, nor do I think thee at all like one that is skilled in games whereof there are many among men, rather art thou such an one as comes and goes in a benched ship, a master of sailors that are merchantmen, one with a memory for his freight, or that hath the charge of a cargo homeward bound, and of greedily gotten gains; thou seemest not a man of thy hands.[5]

Euryalus is a Phaeacian, and the Phaeacians, be it remarked, are not Achaeans. Who they are we know not—whether, as Victor Bérard assures us, Phoenicians, or a branch of that Aegean folk whose wondrous civilization has been revealed to us at Cnossus, or a creation of the poet’s brain. In Homer they are a mysterious folk, and this is not the place to try and solve the mystery. One thing is certain: they are not true Achaeans, and though the poet ascribes to them much of the manners of the Achaeans, including their games, he lets us know with a delightful humour that they are not quite the real thing. Their love of sport is assumed, and consequently somewhat exaggerated. There is no greater glory for a man, says Laodamas, than that which he achieves by hand and foot.[6] We can hardly imagine such a sentiment from one of the heroes of the Iliad, or from the Odysseus of the Odyssey. The Phaeacian, however, is somewhat of a braggart, and wishes to pose as a sportsman before a stranger, who is no longer young, and whom he certainly does not suspect of being an athlete. Let us make trial, says Alcinous, of divers games, that the stranger may tell his friends when home he returneth how greatly we excel all men in boxing and wrestling, and leaping and speed of foot[7]—a harmless boast and safe apparently. But Odysseus, stung by their taunts, picks up a diskos larger than the Phaeacians ever threw and hurls it far beyond their marks, and then in his anger challenges any of the Phaeacians to try the issue in boxing, or in wrestling, or any sport except running, for which, after his buffeting in the sea, he is not quite in condition. At once the tune changes, and Alcinous confesses that after all the Phaeacians are no perfect boxers nor wrestlers, but (a safe boast after what Odysseus has said!) speedy runners and the best of seamen. And then the truth comes out: Dear to us ever is the banquet, and the harp and the dance, and changes of raiment, and the warm bath and love and sleep! Clearly the Phaeacians are no sportsmen, nor Achaeans, and we have really no concern with them; but I may be pardoned for dwelling on this delightful scene, because through it all we can trace the truth that to the poet every warrior is a sportsman, a man of his hands, and that the sportsman is not occupied with greedily gotten gains.

The same scene tells us, too, that sports are no new thing among the Achaeans. Odysseus, when challenging the Phaeacians, recalls the prowess of his youth, just as in the Iliad the aged Nestor recalls his victories in the games which the Epeans held at Buprasium at the funeral of Amarynces. But there is a yet remoter past in which heroes and gods contended. There were giants in those days is always the theme of the aged sportsman, and Odysseus, though more than a match for all his contemporaries, confesses that with the men of old he would not vie, with Heracles and Eurytus, who contended with the immortal gods.

But though the Achaeans were an athletic race with a long tradition of athletes, we must beware of the common fallacy of introducing into Homer the ideas and arrangements of later Greek athletics. Homeric tradition undoubtedly influenced Greek athletics, but to talk of the Homeric gymnasium, the Homeric stadium, the Homeric pentathlon, or solemnly to explain Homer in the light of these institutions, is as ridiculous as to talk of King Arthur’s school of physical training or Robin Hood’s shooting gallery. The Homeric Greek had no gymnasium, no race-course, no athletic meeting. There was nothing artificial about his sports: they were the natural product of a warlike race, part of the daily life of the family. They were the education of the boys, the recreation of the men, and even the elders took their share in teaching and encouraging the younger. For physical vigour and skill in military exercises were indispensable to the chieftain in an age when battles were won by individual prowess. No elaborate arrangements were necessary; the courtyard would serve for a wrestling ring, the open country for a race-course, and when sports were to be held on a larger scale a suitable space could be quickly cleared. For though there were no athletic meetings, there were friendly gatherings for sports in plenty. On the occasion of any gathering, whether to entertain a distinguished guest, to offer a sacrifice, or to pay the last rites to a departed chieftain, sports formed part of the programme. Sometimes prizes were offered—a victim or an ox-hide for the foot-race, a woman or a tripod for the chariot-race. Particularly was this the case in the funeral sports, when the prizes were rich and numerous.

The value of the prizes seems intended to mark the generosity of the giver of the games, and to show honour to the dead rather than to attract or reward competitors. That they were rather gifts, mementoes of the dead, than prizes, is clear from the fact that at the games of Patroclus every competitor receives a prize, in one case even without a competition. Sometimes, as in the days of the tournament, a weighty issue might be decided by an athletic contest. Instances of this are frequent in the legends of the Greeks: in Homer we have the fatal contest with the bow of Odysseus by which Penelope proposed to decide between her importunate suitors. But whatever the occasion, the Homeric games differed entirely from the athletic festival or meeting. They were impromptu, almost private entertainments, in which only the invited guests, or, in the case of a prince’s funeral, the neighbouring princes or leaders of the army took part. When Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, craved leave to try the bow, the request was met with a storm of protest from the suitors.

From what has been said it is clear that the Homeric games were chiefly aristocratic: it was the sceptred kings and their families who excelled in all games, and who alone entered for competitions, though, as we shall see, the common soldiers too had their sports.

In considering the different events of the Homeric sports, it will be convenient to follow the description of the funeral games of Patroclus in the Iliad. First in order of time and of honour comes the chariot-race, the most aristocratic of all the events, the monopoly of chieftains who went to war in chariots. Too important an event for casual gatherings, it was especially connected with great funeral games. Here, as we have noticed, rich prizes were offered, and the possession of a fine stud of horses was a source of considerable profit. Thus Agamemnon enumerates among the gifts with which he hopes to appease Achilles twelve prize-winning steeds who have already won him no small fortune.

In the Odyssey we have no mention of the chariot-race; and naturally so, for Ithaca (wherever it be) is no land that pastureth horses, nor does it possess wide courses or meadow-land. In the Iliad it is otherwise; the plains of Thessaly and Argos, the homes of Achilles and the Atreidae, were always famed for their horses, and in the plain of Troy the Greek charioteers found ample scope. It is interesting, too, to note that, except at Troy, the only other chariot-races mentioned in the Iliad are in spacious Elis,[8] which was in Homeric times the land of the Epeans, where the lords of Ithaca kept studs of horses, and in historic times the scene of the Olympic festival. It was at Buprasium in Elis that Nestor competed at the funeral games of Amarynces; and on a former occasion his father Neleus had gone to war with Augeas because the latter had seized four horses which he had sent to Elis to compete in the games for a tripod. The mention of four horses is suspicious, for the chariot in which the Achaean heroes raced was the two-horse war-chariot. There are also other reasons for supposing the passage to be a late interpolation subsequent to the institution of the Olympic chariot-race.

For the chariot-race Achilles provides five prizes—for the winner a woman skilled in fair handiwork and a tripod, for the second a six-year-old mare in foal, for the third a goodly caldron untouched by the fire, for the fourth two talents of gold, for the fifth a two-handled urn. For the five prizes there are five competitors. On the details of the competitors and of their horses we must not linger, nor on the lecture on the art of driving which the aged Nestor reads to his son Antilochus. Critics complain that it interrupts the narrative; but the rambling, prosy speech is delightfully characteristic of the garrulous old sportsman, and so human! Its point seems to consist in certain information which he gives about the course; for it is no regular race-course, like the later hippodrome. It is a natural course selected for the occasion like that of a point-to-point race, save that in this case the chariots after rounding the goal return to the starting point. On such a course local knowledge is invaluable. The point selected for the goal is a withered tree-stump with a white stone on either side of it—a monument of some dead man, or a goal for the race set up by men of old—and round it is smooth driving ground. At this point, which is just visible from the start, the two tracks meet—not necessarily parallel tracks, for chariots cannot take a bee-line from point to point, but must follow the lie of the ground. Here Achilles places an umpire, godlike Phoenix, to note the running and tell the truth thereof; for though the goal is just visible, the track is sometimes lost to the spectators’ view, and as the chariots round the mark they disappear from sight for a time. The track, like Greek roads in general, is not of the smoothest, and in one part has been partially washed away by a torrent, so that there is no room for two chariots to pass. Possibly the road in this part, as is often the case, passed along the actual bed of the winter torrent.

The charioteers draw lots for their places, and then the chariots take their place in a line. Commentators gravely debate whether the Greek means in a line or in file, like a row of hansom cabs! But there is no subject wherein commentators are so rampant as in athletics, and there is no athletic absurdity which they do not father upon the Greeks, who, after all, really did know a little about sports. We are not told how the horses were started—we must hurry on with the poet to the finish. How Apollo made Tydeides drop his whip, and how Athene restored it to him and then made the leader’s horses run off the course and wreck his chariot; how Antilochus when they came to the broken part of the course bored Menelaus and deprived him of the place; how the spectators quarrelled as to which chariot was leading, and Idomeneus offered to bet Aias a caldron or a tripod; how Antilochus apologised for his youthful impetuosity and Menelaus generously forgave him; how every man received his prize, even he whose chariot was broken,—all this is known to every reader of Homer; to retell it would be sacrilege. Particularly charming is the scene where Achilles presents Nestor with a prize which has been left over as a memorial of Patroclus’ burying. In recalling his youthful victories at Buprasium the old man mentions that he was defeated in the chariot-race by the two sons of Actor, one of whom held the reins while the other plied the whip. Here apparently we have a hint of an earlier form of the chariot-race, where, as in war, the chieftain was accompanied by his charioteer. In Achilles’ time there is already a difference between the sport and the reality.

The next two events—the boxing and the wrestling matches—are described as ἀλεγεινός, hard or distressful, an epithet which, as before observed, seems rather a recommendation than otherwise. Indeed these two sports, which are always mentioned together, already held the position of pre-eminence which they held at the time of Pindar, and they formed the chief part of the Achaean chieftain’s athletic education. For boxing and wrestling are essentially exercises of skill. The child and the savage hit, kick, tear, scratch, bite, and from this primitive rough-and-tumble the Greek in later time developed the scientific pankration; it is only the civilised man who distinguishes boxing and wrestling, who uses the fist to strike and conducts a fight by rules. In Homer both wrestling and boxing are already arts, and though in their rougher form popular sports, the science of them seems to have been the monopoly of the chieftains, perhaps, like the Japanese jiu-jitsu, jealously handed down from father to son. The importance of the art of self-defence in those unsettled times is obvious from the many legends of robbers and bullies who challenged strangers to a bout of wrestling or boxing, till their career of murder was cut short by a Heracles, a Theseus, or a Polydeuces, in whose victories later art and story represented the triumph of science and Hellenism over brute force and barbarism. Such a victory Odysseus himself is said to have won in Lesbos over Philomeleides, whom he threw mightily, and all the Achaeans rejoiced.[9] In Homer, Polydeuces is already the boxer, and Odysseus of many counsels wins glory both as boxer and wrestler.

For the boxing Achilles offers two prizes. Epeius at once advances and claims the first prize. In his somewhat brutal arrogance, and his admission that, though superior to all in boxing, he falls short in actual warfare, we have perhaps a foretaste of the later professional boxer. But mock modesty is no characteristic of the Greeks, and poetic nemesis was not to be meted out; moreover, his boastfulness is atoned for by his courtesy in his victory. Still, in the contrast between real war and the sport we seem to see the poet’s judgment that athletics are man’s recreation, not his business. The challenge of Epeius is accepted by Euryalus, who came of a boxing stock; for his father Mecisteus had formerly defeated all the Cadmeans at the burial of Oedipodes. Their friends help to gird them, and bind on the well-cut thongs of oxhide. The loin-belt was, as we shall see, discarded later on, but the thongs remained unchanged till the fifth century, when we shall find them constantly depicted on the vases. Then the two lifted up stalwart hands and fell to. And noble Epeius came on, and as the other cast a glance around, smote him on the cheek, nor could he much more stand, for his fair limbs straightway failed under him, and as when beneath the north wind’s ripple a fish leapeth on a tangle-covered beach, and then the black wave hideth it, so leapt Euryalus at that blow. But the great-hearted Epeius took him in his hands and set him upright, and his dear comrades stood around him and led him through the ring with trailing foot, spitting out clotted blood, drooping his head awry, and they set him down in his swoon among them. The description is perfectly clear. Epeius forced the fighting, and catching his opponent off his guard knocked him out in orthodox, or, as some purists would say, unorthodox, fashion with a swinging uppercut on the point of the jaw.

A yet better description of a fight with a similar finish occurs in the Odyssey.[10] Odysseus, returning to his home disguised as a beggar, finds installed there the professional beggar Irus, who at once picks a quarrel with him. The suitors, delighted and amused at the prospect of a fight between a pair of beggars, form a ring round the pair and egg them on, promising to the winner a haggis that is cooking at the fire. But when the beggars strip and gird up their rags they see that they are mistaken in one of their men. Odysseus strips like an athlete, clean and big of limb, and the suitors marvel. Irus too, despite his bulk, marvels, and would fain withdraw. But it is too late: the suitors will not be baulked of their fun, and the fight starts. Of course it is a foregone conclusion, and Odysseus himself knows it. He knows, too, what he can do; his only doubt is whether he shall kill the braggart outright, or strike him lightly to the earth. He decides on the latter course, and proceeds to dispose of him in most artistic fashion. Irus leads off with a clumsy left-hander at Odysseus’ right shoulder, and Odysseus cross-counters with a blow on the neck below the ear which knocks him out. Fights of this sort were doubtless common occurrences, and a little science must have been a very useful possession. That the Achaeans did possess something of the science is clear from the two fights described in Homer, though their science seems rather of the unconventional American type, and does not commend itself to staunch supporters of the orthodox English school.

For wrestling also two prizes are offered, a tripod valued at twelve oxen, and a woman skilled in all manner of work valued only at four oxen. For the two prizes there are two competitors, no less persons than Odysseus and Ajax, the types respectively of cleverness and strength. The match is conducted under definite rules, the rules of what was called upright wrestling, in which, the object being to throw the opponent, ground wrestling was not allowed. Girding themselves the two advanced into the midst of the ring, and clasped each the other in his arms with stalwart hands like gable rafters of a lofty house. The attitude is identical with that adopted by Westmorland and Cumberland wrestlers to-day. Then came the struggle for a closer grip; but when after much striving neither could gain an advantage, Ajax suggested an expedient that each in turn should allow the other to obtain a fair grip and try to throw him by lifting him off the ground. There is here no suggestion of unfairness, but undoubtedly the advantage is with the heavier man. Odysseus, however, was equal to the occasion, and as Ajax lifted him, not forgetful of his art, he struck him with his foot behind the knee, in technical language hammed him, and so brought him to the ground, falling heavily upon him. As both wrestlers fell together the bout was inconclusive. Next came Odysseus’ turn: unable to lift his bulky opponent off the ground he crooked his knee within the other’s, and both fell sideways. The chip employed was apparently the hank or the inside click of the modern wrestler. But the fall was what is known as a dog-fall, and inconclusive. The two were proceeding to the third bout when Achilles put an end to the contest, and awarded to each an equal prize.

Futile efforts have been made to explain the verdict by showing that Odysseus won the first bout and Ajax the second; the explanation given above rests on the simple supposition that when both wrestlers fell, no fall was scored. If each had won one bout, the excitement would have been too intense for the contest to be stopped, but two inconclusive bouts were naturally tedious to the spectators.

The foot-race need not detain us long. There were three prizes and three competitors; among them, in spite of his recent exertions, the veteran Odysseus. The course was of the same impromptu type described for the chariot-race, round some distant mark and back to the starting place, where the ground was wet and slippery with the blood of the oxen slaughtered for sacrifice. It was a great race. Ajax, the son of Oeleus, led, while Odysseus followed closely in his track amid the cheers of the Achaeans. As they neared the finish Odysseus prayed to Athene, who made his limbs feel light, both feet and hands—a delightful description of the spurt; but not content with such legitimate aid, she caused Ajax, just as they reached the prize, to slip in the victim’s blood. But in Homer there is no ill-feeling at such incidents; the defeated rivals merely comment good-humouredly on the interference of the goddess, just as the modern sportsman, not always so good-humouredly, on his opponent’s luck. Friends, ye will bear me witness when I say that even herein the immortals favour elder men. What the moderns ascribe to luck, the Achaeans, like all the ancients, ascribed to the direct action of the gods: it is a later age that makes fortune a goddess.

Of the four remaining events, three at least—the single combat between Ajax and Diomede, throwing the solos, and the contest with the bow—are admitted